I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a board game and, in particular, discloses a mathematical board game wherein the scoring is provided by players successfully occupying one or more spaces between two prime number spaces located on a game board.
II. Description of the Related Art
Arithmetic and mathematical skills are often difficult for children to acquire. The abstract use and manipulation of numbers is not generally an inherently obvious operation to most children, and the application of such operations to something which they can readily see or use is often of great assistance in teaching basic arithmetic and mathematics to children and others.
Early development of mathematical skills is crucial to children. Unless mathematical skills are understood at an early age, problems in learning math may grow as a child continues his or her schooling. In many instances, young children are taught to memorize concepts without really understanding what it is that they are learning. For instance, children are often encouraged to memorize multiplication tables as a way to understand multiplication. What often occurs is that children fail to completely memorize all the various permutations, leaving one or more combinations that go unlearned. Frustration may develop if the unlearned combinations are not overcome, leading to a lack of confidence when learning new mathematical concepts in future years. Students' self esteem may suffer as a result of not understanding more and more complex mathematical concepts. As a result, children often perform poorly in math throughout their middle school and high school years. Teachers and parents may lower their expectations in response to a child's poor performance, and the failure perpetuates itself.
In an effort to teach mathematical skills to children and others, challenging board games have been designed in the past to promote learning of basic mathematical skills. Many times, it is the purpose of these games to provide a challenge to the player which will test mathematical and reasoning skills. However, most of these games are targeted at a limited age range and only focus on a narrow range of mathematical skills to be learned. For example, many mathematical games are targeted at pre-school children and teach basic addition and subtraction skills. Other games are targeted at elementary school students and teach more complicated skills, such as multiplication, division, and fractions. Such games are not suitable for players who do not fall within the targeted age group for the specific game in question. In addition, most of these mathematical teaching games require at least basic mathematical skills prior to playing. Without basic mathematical skills, most mathematical games, even those geared towards young children, are not suitable for very young players. As a result, critical mathematical skills are not learned as early in life as might be otherwise. In general, older children become bored quickly with games that are designed for younger players, and younger children become frustrated and lose interest quickly in games that are too advanced for them. One other drawback to most mathematical games is that once they are played several times, the answers are known and the novelty wears out quickly.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,565,374 to Pak discloses a mathematical game wherein contiguous sequences of numbered tiles are formed by blindly drawing tiles from a bag, shielding them from the opponent, and placing these tiles--distinguishable from the opponent's tiles by color--on the playing surface to form a sum which is a multiple of 10. Duplicate numbers as are allowed on the board which make tracing, and thus, strategizing difficult. The purpose of this game is to outscore the opponent by forming defined sequences of numbered tiles whose sum is greater than a predetermined number. No points, however, may be scored by virtue of a sequence consisting of tiles of two different players.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,460,835 to Cans shows a game of similar construction where ranks and files are used to form sequences of numbered tiles which have again been blindly drawn from a bag. The tiles are shielded from the opponent, and one player scores along ranks only, while the other is allowed to score along files only. The purpose of this game is to form sequences of tiles which sum as close as possible to a single, predetermined number (175 in the preferred embodiment of the game).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,120,226 to Tsai shows a simple mathematical teaching aid which essentially is an array of ranks and files which accept numbered cubes used to form products of positive integers. An integral part of this teaching aid is a multiplication table which slides under the ranks and files for checking the accuracy of the multiplication.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,545,101 to Fike shows a mathematical game composed of ranks and files of integers in random order. This game requires an instructor, and can be played by several players, each with his own game board. The instructor calls out an arithmetic problem and each student marks what he believes to be the correct answer on his board. The first student to correctly mark one full row or one full column is the winner of the game.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,659,851 to Lang discloses an elementary mathematics/tic-tac-toe game involving a rectangular array of ranks and files. While the prior art board games provide entertainment, education and support the application of play-by-play, the prior art fails to disclose a game which can be used by younger and older players alike. In addition, most of these games require at least some knowledge of mathematics prior to playing them. Finally, most of these games depend on players simply memorizing multiplication tables as an aid to understanding math.
What is needed is an entertaining mathematical board game which enables players of virtually any age to play, without requiring prior mathematical skills. The game should also approach mathematical learning from an interesting and helpful point of view to reduce anxiety when learning new math skills and allowing players to develop strategic skills as well.